A new study has found that spending time outdoors and switching off our devices is associated with higher levels of happiness during a period of COVID-19 restrictions. Previous academic studies have indicated how being outdoors, particularly in green spaces, can improve mental health by promoting more positive body image, and lowering levels of depression and...
Black children are removed from their families at much greater rates than any other race or ethnicity in this country. At the same time the sheer number of all child abuse investigations in the US is staggering: experts estimate that by age 18 one out of three children has been the subject of a child protective services...
While many physicians benefit from social media by networking with potential collaborators or interfacing with patients, a new study from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago found many physicians also report being sexually harassed and personally attacked on these platforms on the basis of their religion, race or medical recommendations. Although the data were...
People dreaming of travel post-COVID-19 now have some scientific data to support their wanderlust. A new study in the journal of Tourism Analysis shows frequent travelers are happier with their lives than people who don’t travel at all. Chun-Chu (Bamboo) Chen, an assistant professor in the School of Hospitality Business Management at Washington State University, conducted a...
Workers at Garfield Medical Center in suburban Los Angeles were on edge as the pandemic ramped up in March and April. Staffers in a 30-patient unit were rationing a single tub of sanitizing wipes all day. A May memo from the CEO said N95 masks could be cleaned up to 20 times before replacement. Patients...
Fallen pine cones covered 16-year-old Leslie Keiser’s fresh grave at the edge of Wolf Point, a small community on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation on the eastern Montana plains. Leslie, whose father is a member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes, is one of at least two teenagers on the reservation who died...
A recent study by a team of University of Cincinnati researchers shows that suicide planning, attempts and completions were already on the rise pre-COVID-19. Add a pandemic to a holiday season, when depression and suicide are typically higher among both adolescents and adults, and the last couple of weeks of 2020 may be a time...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, health care workers have been at the forefront of the battle against the life-threatening illness. Sadly, they are not immune to the effects of the disease. Many have contracted COVID-19, and some have died. In a paper published in the journal PLOS One, Junaid Razzak, director of the Johns Hopkins Center...
Researchers have developed a way to use a simple home aroma diffuser to test whether N95 and other types of sealing masks, such as KN95 and FFP2 masks, are properly fitted, a result which could be used to help protect healthcare workers and the public from contracting or transmitting COVID-19. The researchers, from the University...
When college campuses closed in the spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the quantity of alcohol consumed by students decreased significantly if they went from living with peers to living with parents, according to a new report in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. Leaving home for college is often associated with increases in...
